In India, Dodging Taxes is part of the game.

NEW DELHI (AP) -- In a country long defined by its poverty, it's easy now to find India's rich.

They're at New Delhi's Emporio mall, where herds of chauffeur-driven Jaguars and Audis disgorge shoppers heading to the Louis Vuitton and Christian Louboutin stores. They're shopping for Lamborghinis in Mumbai. They're putting elevators in their homes and showing off collections of jewel-encrusted watches in Indian luxury magazines. They're buying real estate in comfortable but unpretentious neighborhoods — neighborhoods thought of as simply upper-middle-class just a couple years ago — where apartments now regularly sell for millions of dollars.

They're just about everywhere. Unless it's income tax time. Then, suddenly, they barely exist.

Coming soon here.

Cash will be king - as opposed to the current meme that forecasts the end of cash transactions.

I’ve been to the UK and Italy - where the underground economy booms. And there is a reason it’s strong there...when one no longer trusts the gubmit.

>>>>This story has gotten a lot of press in the U.K., where the taxpayers are pissed that they send millions in AID to this country.

Well, they have looted India for 200 years, now they don’t want to return some of stolen money.

I see what is happening in India as being a very, very good thing.

As someone noted long ago, “People will work for the benefit of themselves and their families; but they will *really* work when their benefits are also in evading high taxation and unfair rules.”

It reminds me of colonial America, where the “best and brightest” figured out endless ways of evading British taxes and rules. It *created* a sense of colonial pride to be a nation of scofflaws, smugglers, tax evaders and conspirators against the crown.

And a lot of that figured into our constitution.

So what about India? Their government is far behind the times, with a bloated bureaucracy, remnants from a failed experiment with socialism, and some rather toxic cultural problems.

However, smart Indians are very smart, and their economy needs development big time, instead of doing things like wasting talented engineers as short order cooks for minimum wage. If they can get their government out of the way, India could have incredible prosperity.

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